Snoop Lion, Maniac Lok, DJ OG-One

[REGGAE RAP] Snoop’s transition from Dogg to Lion isn’t the most surprising reinvention of an artist in history, but it might be one of the more insulting. After all, this is a man who made a career out of glorifying violence and misogyny and marketing it to the masses, and whose embrace of Rastafarianism seems more grounded in weed than religion. Most insulting, though, is how tame his reggae album, Reincarnated, is. Snoop’s spent the last decade or so lending his silky voice to the highest bidder, but in tackling reggae, he’s bong-watered down an already simplistic genre. The result goes down easy as background music, but the Lion doesn’t have nearly any of the bite that made the Dogg a legend.